Challenging Cultures of Death

A Multi-disciplinary Event, Trinity College,
Nov. 2nd to 4th 2007

The international language of sacrifice and martyrdom permeates religious and political institutions, and has been culturally enforced in countless ways.  However, the great religious leaders and prophets – radical cultural critics – insistently cried for mercy not sacrifice. Such prophets did not foretell, but imagined and ensured a better future for all of life.

Standing in that tradition, and at an interdisciplinary level, cultural theorists seek to forge new symbols, theoretical resources and spiritual and artistic practices based on life and mercy rather than on death and sacrifice. They are asking - how do we challenge the traditions whereby we constantly need to achieve our identities at the expense of victims?  Do political and religious systems always have to function this way?

In this multi-disciplinary event, comprising internationally acclaimed keynote speakers, workshop and paper presenters, we aim to forge cutting edge connections between theory, activism, spirituality, psychotherapies, theology, and artistic practices.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Bracha L. Ettinger: Artist. Psychoanalyst. Clinical Psychologist. Marcel Duchamp Professor of Psychoanalysis and Art at the Media & Communications Division, European Graduate School

Professor Griselda Pollock: Professor of the Social and Critical Histories of Art; Director of CentreCATH at University of Leeds;  Co-Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies; Executive Member of Centres for Jewish Studies, and Interdisciplinary Gender Studies.

Dr. Anne Primavesi: A theologian who has published groundbreaking studies on the theological implications of James Lovelock’s scientific Gaia theory, as seen from an ecofeminist perspective.

Professor Peggy Reeves Sanday: Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, one of founders of the anthropology of feminist anthropology, sex and gender and author of several foundational books. Academic promoter of public interest and public feminisms in anthropology

Dr. Genevieve Vaughan. Author, theorist and activist of the Gift Economy (Homo Donans as opposed to Homo Economicus) a counter-discourse that considers mothering as a mode of distribution that coexists with or lies beneath the market economy, and challenges the inevitability of patriarchy and global capitalism.

Workshops/Papers
Matrixial Theory in Art, Psychoanalysis, and Theatre * Eco-feminisms * Art Practice and Subversions * Maternal Thinking * Muslim, Hindu, and Christian Strategies of Resistance * Feminist Spiritualities * Critiques of Sacrifice, Theological and Political  * Pharmacotic War * Blood Mysteries: Blood Sacrifice * Dynamics of Collective Violence.

Details of Panels and Panellists

View or Download the current list of Panallists – More to come shortly, please check back ( Adobe Acrobat required – PDF format)